


No Parting Glances

by balios_and_xanthos



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Did I mention there's angst?, F/M, Heartache, Not Canon Compliant (sorta), So much angst, Unrequited love (sorta), there will be smut in the next installment i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-03-07 16:11:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18876637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/balios_and_xanthos/pseuds/balios_and_xanthos
Summary: He should have known better than to place his heart in the hands of an eighteen-year-old assassin, but that’s apparently what he’s done. Not ten minutes after the Dragon Queen raises him from obscure bastardy to one of the highest positions in the land, he’s shrugging off the well-wishes of his fellow revelers to wander around the castle like some lovestruck young fool.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So... this is what I imagine could have happened with Arya and Gendry post 803 if the writers had had time for, y'know, consistent characterization and all that jazz. AKA Gendry doesn't want to be a Lord and ALSO doesn't think that getting down on one knee in the archery range is a good way to win our girl over.
> 
> My aim with this is to leave the characters where I think the show is ultimately going to take them. (We'll see tomorrow if I'm right, I guess.) The way in which they get there diverges heavily from canon, however.

He should have known better than to place his heart in the hands of an eighteen-year-old assassin, but that’s apparently what he’s done. Not ten minutes after the Dragon Queen raises him from obscure bastardy to one of the highest positions in the land, he’s shrugging off the well-wishes of his fellow revelers to wander around the castle like some lovestruck young fool. Drunk, restless, and more than a little angry, whether more at Arya or the Queen or the bloody Hound he couldn’t say, he looks for her in the forge and the library and in every corner of the yard. He knows that he should give up, that if she wanted to see him she wouldn’t have made herself so difficult to find. The fact that he can’t bring himself to stop is just another cause for anger.

 _Ours is the fury_ , he thinks, and laughs at the stupidity of it all. 

Outside the great hall, a few of the men from the forge have gathered to drink and carouse. He tries to slip past them as inconspicuously as possible, but he’s never been much good at sneaking around. 

“Come and join in the festivities, milord,” Tym shouts with a little curtsy, making Gendry wince. The others laugh, but there’s no malice in it at all. “Or are you too grand for the likes of us?”

“Hardly. You know I’d much rather be out here with you lot.”

“Then join us!” Tym’s father, a sturdy old man named Wallis whom Gendry rather likes, raises his tankard. “To the blacksmith Lord, may his rule be as just and peaceful as his arms were true.”

The others drink. They’ve all been working twenty hours a day these past few weeks, sweating and swearing and struggling together under a mountain of dragonglass, and their numbers have been thinned significantly by the battle. Mychal is gone, and poor Sammy, and those two little nephews of Waylan’s. If Gendry weren’t so cheesed off with the world, their obvious pride in him would be quite touching. “I hope to continue making arms for a good many years to come,” he says. “In fact, I was planning on repairing Ser Brienne’s helm tomorrow.”

“I’ll be taking care of the lady’s helm,” says Waylan. “The Lord of Storm’s End, working in my forge? No, it wouldn’t be proper.”

“Had you even heard of Storm’s End before tonight, Waylan?” Gendry says, annoyed.

“Had _you_?” Gendry pauses - of course he’d heard of Storm’s End before, but he just realized that he’s not sure what road you’d need to take out of King’s Landing to get there - and the others burst out laughing. He laughs along, his heart sinking as he thinks, _I’m sure there are blacksmiths at Storm’s End, but they won’t dare speak to me like this._

The conversation scatters after that, Tym turning back to his tankard and Waylan calling across the yard to some other friend he’s just spotted. Gendry gives Wallis’s shoulder a squeeze and hurries off, his mood dampened considerably. 

He finally finds Arya at the archery range, because of course he does. She almost shoots him in the chest as he enters. “This your way of celebrating?” he asks.

She smirks, her gaze cool and collected, and releases another arrow. “Something like that.”

Now that he’s found her, the uneasy knot in the pit of his stomach dissolves into nausea. He hadn’t been surprised when she didn’t seek him out immediately following the battle. They had all been shaken, broken, exhausted; none more so than Arya. But as two days stretched on into three, past the clearing of the corpses, and as his body healed and appetites for things besides food and sleep began to stir in him again, he remembered how she had looked at him when they lay together, with that intoxicating mix of fondness and desire, how her little hand had wrapped itself around his bicep and pushed, and the knowledge that she was in the castle somewhere, untouched and haughty in her stupid breeches, had almost driven him mad. Had he been such a poor bedmate? Or had she only been interested in laying with him when there seemed to be no possibility of a repeat performance? 

She had begged him to stay with her, once, but that was a lifetime ago.

She continues to shoot, and he stares at her, wondering how long it will take for her to acknowledge him again. He’s surprised when she pauses, smiles at him, and says, “I’m glad you survived.”

He grunts. It’s nice, but it’s not what he needs, and she must know that, she must. “Thanks to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

"I don’t have much to say about it.” He so desperately wants to embrace her, but he knows it wouldn’t be well-received. She’s still gazing down the range, drawing one arrow after another and shooting each one with unerring accuracy, although her hands are shaking a little and her back is far too rigid. Why is she still out here practicing when she’s this tired, he thinks, there are dark circles under her eyes, isn’t there someone about the place who can make her go to bed? 

_I bet you’d like to make her go to bed_ , says a voice in his head that sounds remarkably like the Hound, and those thoughts won’t get him anywhere, so he changes the subject. “Queen Daenerys just named me Gendry Baratheon, Lord of Storm’s End.”

She lowers her bow, finally, at that, her face inscrutable. “Congratulations? You don’t sound happy about it.”

“I’m not happy about it!”

This seems to confuse her. “Why not?”

He looks around disbelievingly. “Have we met? Do you think I want to be a Lord?”

“What about the name?”

He sighs. As usual, she’s gone straight to the heart of the matter. The awful truth is that, as much as the idea of being a Lord fills him with equal parts terror and disgust, the name means more to him than he ever would have expected. “I don’t mind the name. I wish I could keep that part, and still be a smith.”

She scoffs. “Don’t be stupid, you can still be a smith. You think your new household will begrudge the Lord of the Stormlands his own forge?” He glares at her mulishly. There are times when she makes him feel like he’s seventeen years old again, hotheaded and ornery and full of premature disappointment. She shrugs, resumes shooting. “Turn it down, if you don’t want it.”

“What, I’m supposed to turn down an honor like that from the Queen, in front of all of those people? You can’t _do_ that, Arya. Well, I suppose you can, you can bloody well do whatever you want at this point, but it’s different for people like me.”

“Which kind of people would that be, milord?”

“Don’t call me that.” They break into identical grins as they realize what he’s just said. It’s the first time she’s seemed relaxed all night, and he steps a bit closer to her, suddenly full of warmth. “You see, I thought that you of all people would understand.” He wants, badly, to touch her hand, to take her bow away and draw her against his chest and kiss her, and he almost thinks she might let him. She’s staring up at him with affection, and plenty of sympathy, too, and something else – admiration? Lust? He’s not sure what it is, but he likes it.

“I can have Jon talk to the Queen, if you want,” she says, softly. “He might be able to explain it in such a way as she wouldn’t take offense.”

He pauses to consider this. It’s a generous offer. He’s not sure how many people know that he and Arya are friends, if that’s indeed what they are, but a few people seem to have figured out what the two of them were up to on the eve of the battle – how it ever reached the Hound’s ears, he doesn’t want to know – and for her to ask favors on his behalf might attract gossip. Then again, Jon seems like a discreet man, and like he said before, she’s Arya Stark. She can do what she likes.

Before he can answer, a noise at the door makes them both turn around. It’s Lady Sansa, to whom Gendry instinctively bows his head. She smiles, as she always does, as though a prank is being played on someone somewhere without their knowledge. He’s never liked her much.

“There’s no need for that, Lord Gendry. Congratulations, by the way.”

“Thank you, mi- um. Thanks.”

The way she looks at them is far too knowing for Gendry’s taste. “You never met your father, did you?” she asks him.

“We didn’t exactly live in the same part of town, milady,” he says, not bothering to correct himself this time.

“You’ll have heard stories, though?”

“Not much. I know that he was a great fighter.”

She smirks. “I’m sure he was, when he was your age. By the time I met him, he was a fat, lecherous drunk. He never had any great feeling for politics, or anything, really, besides waging war and bedding whores. And yet the realm was as peaceful under his reign as it’s ever been.” She considers him for a moment before arriving at the point. “He surrounded himself with good people. Excepting Cersei, of course. I’d advise that you do the same.”

He nods. “Thank you for the advice, milady,” he says, feeling completely wrong-footed and a little aggrieved. 

“And now, if you please, I would like a word with my sister,” she says. 

Arya rolls her eyes at him, which makes Gendry feel as though he is walking on air for the second time that night, the way she let her guard down for him and him alone. The feeling doesn’t last. He looks back once as he leaves the room, and Arya’s full attention is fixed on her sister, no parting glances for the poor sod whose heart she’s breaking. She’s broken. 

That night, he dreams that he is on the battlefield again, and he wakes with her name on his lips when a wight shoves a staff through his chest. Grumbling at himself and shivering uncontrollably, he burrows himself under the bedclothes and tries not to remember how it felt to share a bed with her, what a neat little bundle she made in his arms. He knows that he will pay the price for this kind of thinking later, when she leaves him for good.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lord Gendry!” It’s Ser Davos, walking towards him from the direction of the council chambers. He smiles ruefully at what must be the pained look on Gendry’s face. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to people calling you that.”
> 
> Gendry is glad to see him; he wishes he could be more cheerful. “What if I don’t want to get used to it?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did not expect this to take me two weeks to finish. Damned real life, getting in the way of fandom silliness. Anyway, this is my take on how season 2/3 Gendry (i.e. snarky, intelligent, class-conscious Gendry, not the doofus they served us in season 8) might have reacted to the insanity of episodes 802-804.
> 
> I left it a teeeeeny bit open-ended because, who knows, maybe I'll want to revisit these crazy kids someday. (Edit: gah, now I'm writing an open-ended multi-chaptered post-canon epic. Lord help me.)

The next morning, Gendry tries to have a lie-in for the first time in recent memory. There’s nothing for him to do, no one to see, and he has a spectacular hangover, besides. So used is he to rising at dawn, however, and so insistent is the sunlight pouring in through the gap in the curtains, that within a few minutes of waking he gives up the endeavor as hopeless. He sits, stretches, dresses in a fresh tunic. He is rather fond of this room, which is clean and simple and quiet and which he shares with two of Jon’s former brothers from the Wall. He considers it a small mercy that no one has yet insisted that the new Lord Baratheon vacate his quarters in favor of somewhere more suited to his station. 

Breakfast soon dispenses with the hangover. Not knowing where else to go, he makes his way over to the forge. Arya is nowhere to be seen, of course, but he keeps his head down as he crosses the yard, all the same. 

The mood at the forge is subdued, as is to be expected the day after a feast. There’s a tremendous amount of work to be done, and the men are tired and cranky and not in the mood for humoring a latecomer, particularly one who had been expressly banned from the premises the night before. Waylan keeps shooing him away from the hearth, and if Gendry weren’t already feeling so defeated it would be enough to make him pick a fight. 

“Let the poor man have a go, look at him,” Wallis says, and Waylan grunts assent. “Every man needs to work, that’s what I say.”

“Good work and a willing woman, that’s all any man needs,” says Tym, to general laughter. 

Gendry doesn’t want to take his anger out on Ser Brienne’s helm, so he leaves that to Wallis and contents himself with casting new fittings for the castle gates. He’d rather do something a bit more exerting, frankly, but this requires concentration and thus keeps his mind from venturing down dangerous paths, an unlooked-for blessing. 

Later, after the other men have all gone to have their midday meal, Gendry wanders back out into the yard. The little clusters of people there are unwelcome, disorienting. He immediately wants to be somewhere else. Before he can decide what to do with himself, however, a familiar voice catches his attention.

“Lord Gendry!” It’s Ser Davos, walking towards him from the direction of the council chambers. He smiles ruefully at what must be the pained look on Gendry’s face. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to people calling you that.”

Gendry is glad to see him; he wishes he could be more cheerful. “What if I don’t want to get used to it?”

“You’re not thinking of turning it down?” Davos asks. When the truth of it hits him, he sighs and says, “Here I was, wanting to congratulate you.” 

“That’s the thing, I don’t know if I even can turn it down.”

“It might be tricky,” Davos says as if this is beside the point. “Come, sit with me a while.” 

Gendry lets Davos guide him to a bench near the forge. He can see most of the yard from here, and it’s distracting, the way he constantly finds himself scanning it for a glimpse of her. He tries to focus on Davos, who looks increasingly concerned. “You don’t look well,” he says.

For a moment, Gendry considers telling him about Arya, but he is not that far gone, thank the gods. “It’s been a confusing couple of days.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“How was it for you during the battle?”

Davos grimaces. “I was up on the ramparts until they broke through. After that… I honestly couldn’t tell you. How any one of us survived, I will never know.”

“We survived because of Arya,” he says, because he apparently is that much of a fool.

Davos looks at him sharply. “Aye, I suppose that’s true. Do you two know each other?”

“We’re old friends. Or, we were.” This is a perilous avenue for conversation, so he continues, “She doesn’t understand why I don’t want to be a Lord, either.”

“Oh, I never said I didn’t understand it,” Davos says, still looking at him a bit strangely. “I understand it well enough. Look, lad. You’re cleverer than you let on. You must know that last night the Queen saddled you with more responsibility than most men have to deal with in their entire lives. Not honor, not recognition, but responsibility. And no one wants responsibility. It just gets handed to you, and what you do with it is your decision.”

“But you think I should accept it.”

“Yes, if you really want to know, I do.”

“Why?”

Davos thinks about this. “I suppose part of it is me getting sentimental in my old age. Your uncle made many mistakes, but I was proud to serve him. I don’t like the idea of House Baratheon crumbling into dust. And I did save your life once.” 

“I hadn’t forgotten,” Gendry says, his heart lifting for what feels like the first time that day.

“You’d best not. I suppose another part of it is that I think you would make a very fine Lord.” This makes Gendry laugh out loud. “Is that so difficult to believe?”

“Well – yes.”

“See, you’re proving my point.” At Gendry’s puzzlement, he says, “You don’t think too highly of yourself, which means you won’t do stupid things in the name of glory. You’ve been a commoner, so you’ll understand the people you rule better than any other Lord Whathaveyou in the Seven Kingdoms. And people like you. Aye, it might be tough when you first get there, but people will want to help you. They’ll want you to do well.”

“There’s no one else who wants it, then? No second cousins who won’t take kindly to what they see as their birthright being claimed by some bastard blacksmith?”

“First of all, you’re not a bastard anymore, so get used to that. Secondly, you have the Queen behind you.”

“She’s not the Queen in Storm’s End, though, is she? Cersei is.”

Davos gives him a shrewd look. “I thought you didn’t want it, but here you are talking as though you’re worried it’s going to slip through your fingers.”

Gendry has to acknowledge that he is being a bit contrary. “You’re right. It’s just, sometimes I get the feeling that nothing good ever happens to me. Even the things that ought to be good, somehow they always end up gutting me the most.”

Naturally, that’s the moment that Arya chooses to saunter out of the Great Hall. “You and me both, lad,” Davos says. Gendry barely hears him. She’s spotted him and Davos across the yard, seems about to walk over and join them. Gendry can’t meet her eye, can only look down at the ground in front of him, unseeing, his palms starting to sweat. He’s taken a fancy to plenty of girls before, even bedded a few of them – of the three women he’d been with before Arya, two had been Flea Bottom lasses and one a prostitute from the Street of Silk – but only one, years and years ago, had made him lose his footing this completely, and none of them, if he’s honest with himself, has ever made him feel this hopeless. There’s no way he can face her now, not with Davos there, not with his head a welter of confusion and regret and unanswerable questions. He looks up, finally, and some of this torment must be manifest on his face, because she stops dead in her tracks, already halfway across the yard. 

Davos is rambling on about something else now, and Gendry ought to be paying attention to him. He is in dire need of good counsel, and counsel from such a good man as Davos is hard to come by. Besides, Davos will soon realize what he’s staring at. Gendry forces himself to look down, thinking, _please, please let her walk away_ , and attunes himself to Davos’s conversation sufficiently to nod in the right places. By the time he looks up again, she’s vanished. 

~

Gendry spends the rest of the day in the forge, mulling over what Davos said and avoiding the company of the other smiths. The idea of returning to his chambers fills him with dread, and he lingers by the hearth long after Waylan and Wallis and the rest of them have gone to eat and then to bed. He loves the smithy when it’s quiet like this. It’s the closest thing he’s ever had to a home, the comforting hiss as he lowers burning metal into in the slack tub and the warmth of the hearth with the world falling silent around him. 

He’s considering whether it would be completely mad to just sleep on the floor of the smithy when a figure materializes out of the shadows beside him, making him nearly drop his hammer. It’s Arya. “Seven hells. You startled me.”

She shrugs. “Everyone says that.”

So he’s _everyone_ now. That’s great. “Maybe everyone has a point,” he says, lamely, but he’s past caring what she thinks of him. In a few days’ time, he will ride south to take Storm’s End – with what men he’s expected to do this, he has no idea, but he assumes the Queen or Jon must be willing to spare him a few soldiers, at least – and she will stay in the north, and in all likelihood they will never see each other again. A few days ago, this would have made him sad. Right now, whatever sadness he feels hits him through a haze of disappointment so thick he can barely perceive it at all.

“Why are you here this late?” she asks.

 _Every man needs to work_ , he thinks. “You knew I’d be here, didn’t you?”

“I looked in your chambers first. Those men you’re quartered with are idiots, and they’ve got you in the draftiest part of the castle. You should ask to be moved.”

“You were looking for me in my chambers?” He tosses his hammer onto a workbench, stares at her in utter bafflement. “Have you gone mad? Why?”

Her eyebrows are doing that ridiculous thing again, and she looks almost amused. “You know why.”

“Seven hells, Arya.” He’s put up so many defenses, enclosed himself in such thick armor, that when it all comes crumbling down he feels a bit faint. “You wanted to lay together, right there in my chambers, with the men of the Night’s Watch… watching?”

She rolls her eyes. “I didn’t know the men of the Night’s Watch were going to be there. It’s all right, though. I can lay with you just as well here.” 

She walks right up to him, like she did the other night. He swallows thickly, his heart pumping so furiously he’s surprised she can’t hear it and isn’t scared off by it, but of course she isn’t scared off by it, she isn’t scared of anything. It’s not a comforting thought. “This is a bad idea,” he says.

“Don’t you want to?” she asks, looking him up and down in a way that makes him suspect she’ll only halfway hear his answer.

He huffs with astonished laughter. “Someone might see us.” It feels blasphemous to speak about what they’re about to do out loud, even as she’s backing him into the shadowy corner of the forge. “It’s not the end of the world anymore, people would care. They’d expect us to –”

“I don’t care.” She looks straight up at his face. “Please?”

That one little word breaks him. Stunned into silence, he watches her take off her doublet and her shirt. When she stands on tiptoe to kiss him, he draws back a little. She hesitates, the shadow of a doubt darkening her face, and he leans forward and kisses her as gently as he can stand. He’s acting on pure instinct, not following any conscious strategy, but it seems to be working, because after a measly few kisses she makes this extraordinary sound and practically faints forward onto his chest. 

“Hello,” he says, grinning down at her.

“Hello,” she replies, sounding so uncharacteristically girlish and small that it’s all he can do not to kiss her nose or stroke her cheeks or do something equally soft. Maybe a willing body is all that she needs right now – he’s not sure – but he feels certain that such tenderness might frighten her away.

So he kisses her some more, and then there’s a mad scramble to divest each other of their clothes. For all its charms, the smithy isn’t an ideal place to lay with somebody, but he piles a few spare aprons on the floor to make a cushion for them, and in any case Arya doesn’t seem to mind at all. 

In the moments when he allowed himself to imagine that he would ever get to sleep with her again, he’d thought that he would want to take things more slowly the next time, to please her thoroughly in the ways he’s heard it’s possible to please a woman. But he is so blindsided with lust and infatuation, and she suddenly seems so desperate to have him inside her, that within minutes he has her on her back on the floor, her legs hooked around the backs of his knees as he slides into her. 

“Is this –” he finds himself saying, desperately fighting the urge to move his hips. “Is this all right?”

She huffs with impatience and pushes him fully inside her by digging her heels into his arse. “It’s better than all right,” she says through gritted teeth. “Now shut up.”

He laughs, his head spinning. Last time, she had insisted on staying on top the entire time, but he prefers to have her writhing about underneath him, soft and eager but still willing to boss him around. She also seems surprised by how good it is, and his delight at this makes him forget himself completely and say all kinds of idiotic things. At one point she smushes her mouth against his, whether to shut him up or to stifle her own noises he’s not sure. “Someone is going to hear us,” she says, warningly.

“Let them,” he says, and this is apparently the right answer, because she whines a little and urges him deeper still.

Afterwards, he bundles up some of their clothing into makeshift pillows. His knees are filthy, as is the back of her head, and Arya laughs at him when he tries to muss the dirt out of her hair. She seems to want to continue kissing him, so he fights the urge to fall asleep. For the first time in days, he’s not worrying about anything, not unhappy about anything, content to let her run her hand up and down his chest and kiss his mouth and sniff at his neck – this makes him smile. He knows it won’t last, but he doesn’t care. 

“That was much better than the first time,” she says.

 _It was good for me both times_ , Gendry thinks, a bit bashful. A troubling thought occurs to him. “Did I hurt you, last time?”

“No, not at all.”

“But I thought you hadn’t…”

“I was wondering if you’d notice.” Gendry stares at her, nonplussed. “You didn’t see any blood, did you?”

“So you have been with a man before.” He’s not sure what to think about that.

“No, you were the first. But you didn’t take my maidenhead. I did, with my fingers.” She pauses and rolls onto her back, looking up at the ceiling with something like wistfulness. “It was back when we were on the road with Yoren. Better that I should do it than some raper.” 

They are silent for a long while after this. There are so many questions he wants to ask her that he isn’t sure where to start. Whatever happened to her in the years since they last parted isn’t something they could possibly cover in a lazy post-coital conversation. And yet he still can’t shake the notion that he knows her still, despite how profoundly she’s changed. He’s never been with a girl whom he considered a friend before. He has the feeling that she’s spoiled him for anyone else. 

“I spoke to Jon about the Lordship this afternoon,” she says eventually. “He wants to talk to you about it first, but he thinks he can probably bring the Queen around.”

Gendry sighs. “That was generous of you, but not necessary, as it happens.”

“You’ve decided to take it?”

“I think so.”

“I’m glad. What changed your mind?”

“Ser Davos. He said he thought I’d make a fine Lord.”

“I could have told you that.” 

He scoffs. “A likely story. You never say anything nice to me,” he says, smiling so she’ll know that he doesn’t mind.

“Only because you never give me reason to,” she grumbles, curling up slightly with her head resting on his chest. After a pause, in a different voice, she says, “I always liked you, you know. Even back when we were young.”

He sits up a little, makes her lift her head to face him. The fire is dying, and her face is but a shadow outlined by the light of the moon pouring in through the door of the smithy. She looks incredibly sad. “I know,” he says, wondering why it feels like he’s saying goodbye. “We’re still young, though, aren’t we? You’re just not too young for me anymore.”

“I don’t feel young. I don’t know what I feel like.”

He’s starting to feel agitated again. An idea that started developing in the back of his mind the moment he grasped her purpose in seeking him out that night asserts itself as his only chance of holding onto the happiness that he can already feel slipping away. “Arya, you wouldn’t come with me to Storm’s End, would you?” he says. “I know you don’t want to wear gowns, or embroider, or be a proper lady, but you could… I don’t know, you could help me not make a massive fool of myself, and you’d be free to do as you please.” He swallows, braces himself for what is almost certainly a mistake, but he has to try, he has to. “We could marry, eventually. If we wanted to.” _If you wanted to_ , he should have said. His feelings are not in question. 

She chews her lip for a long moment, considering. “I have to go to King’s Landing to kill Cersei. And after that… Too much has happened here. I think I want to leave Westeros.”

 _I’ll come with you_ , he thinks desperately, but he knows that it isn’t an option, not after he’s told her he’s planning to take Storm’s End. Something in the way she said it, too, made it clear that she would be going alone.

She looks at him, smiles a little even as her eyes glow like starlight. “Who knows, maybe one day I’ll come back.”

He smiles back at her as if he’s going to wait for her, although he knows he won’t, he won’t be able to bear it. “Wherever I am, there will always be a place for you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” _I’m allowed to feel it, though_ , he thinks.


End file.
